Chapter 15European Exploration and

Conquest, 1450-1650

Before We Begin The Renaissance, Reformation, and European exploration and conquests occurred simultaneously. This

chapter begins by laying out the non-European empires, kingdoms, and city-states in the eastern hemisphere. Western European had been almost completely isolated from these powerful and wealthy areas from the time of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire until the Crusaders. Crusaders brought back luxury goods from their adventures, and late medieval and early Renaissance Italian merchants saw new trading opportunities. There were 3 well-established trade routes into which the Europeans wanted to insert themselves: the so-called Silk Roads, the Indian Ocean Basin network, and the Gold-Salt and Trans-Saharan African routes.

At the peak of the Renaissance, Europeans were receiving luxury goods, technology, and scholarship from their newly discovered neighbors. Western European maritime explorations relied heavily on these contributions. Merchants and consumers desired more access to luxury goods at cheaper prices, and when access was threatened by the Ottoman Turkish conquest of the Byzantine Empire, first the Portuguese and then everyone else began looking for a way around Ottomans to get access to the Indian Ocean Basin and Silk Roads trade zones.

The western Europeans were the last in a long line of eastern hemisphere maritime explorers. It would only be in the late 15th century that the western Europeans would finally join the group. Unfortunately, the western Europeans had little to offer in terms of trade. The Chinese wanted bullion. Ming China had one quarter of the world’s population and needed silver and gold to mint into coins to keep their enormous economy functioning. Half the silver mined at Potosi went to Spain; the other half went through Manila to China. Finally, the Europeans had something the Chinese wanted.

If the merchants didn’t have bullion, they used gunpowder weapons to force people to trade with them. The first gunpowder weapons, cannons, were invented in China, and were brought to the Middle East with the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. Cannons spread through the Middle East until the Crusaders encountered them and brought the technology into western Europe. Europeans manufactured the first handheld gunpowder weapons and were the first to mount cannons on ships. With gunpowder weapons, first the Portuguese and then the Dutch forced themselves into the Indian Ocean basin trade networks and established trading-post empires. The Spanish used gunpowder weapons to enable their conquest of the Americas and to establish land-based empires.

I. World Contact Before Columbus

I.A. The Trade World of the Indian Ocean1. Pre-Columbian world trade network center: Indian

Ocean.2. Since Han and Roman times, seaborne trade between

China, India, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe had flowed across the Indian Ocean.

3. Merchants congregated in port cities with diverse populations.

4. China played a key role in the fifteenth century revival of Indian Ocean Trade.

5. Admiral Zheng led seven voyages of exploration between 1405 - 1433.

6. India was the crucial link between the Persian Gulf and the South-East and East Asian trade networks.

I.B. Africa1. Africa played an important role in world

trade before Columbus.2. Cairo = hub for Indian Ocean trade goods.3. Most of the gold that reached Europe in

the 15th century came from Africa. 4. Slaves were another key African

commodity. 5. Legends about Africa played an important

role in the European imagination about the outside world.

I.C. The Ottoman and Persian Empires1. The Middle East was crucial to the late

medieval world trade system.2. The Silk Road linked the West to the Far

East. 3. The Turkish Ottomans and the Persian

Safavids dominated the region. 4. Turkish expansion badly frightened

Europeans. 5. The Safavids opposed Ottoman regional

ambitions.

I.D. Genoese and Venetian Middlemen1. Europe was the western terminus of the world

trading system2. Venice grew in importance with the creation

of the crusader kingdoms and reached the height of its power in the 1400s.

3. Venice specialized in luxury goods and slaves.4. Genoa was Venice’s ancient rival. 5. The Genoese focused on finance and the

Western Mediterranean.6. The Genoese were active in the slave trade.

II. The European Voyages of Discovery

II.A. Causes of European Expansion1. A revival of population and economic

activity increased demand for Eastern luxury goods.

2. Religious fervor was another important catalyst for expansion.

3. Curiosity and a desire for glory also played a role in European expansion.

4. Political centralization in Spain, France, and England helps explain their expansion.

II.B. Technological Stimuli to Exploration1. Developments in shipbuilding, weaponry,

and navigation provided another spur to expansion.

II.C. The Portuguese Overseas Empire1. Portugal led the expansion, seeking to Christianize

Muslims, import gold from West Africa, find an overseas route to India to obtain Indian spices, and contact the mythical Christian ruler of Ethiopia, Prester John.

2. Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) played a leading role in the early phases of Portuguese exploration.

3. Beginning in 1415, the Portuguese sent their ships further down the west coast of Africa until they rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached India in 1497-1499.

4. The Portuguese reached Brazil in 1500. 5. The Portuguese fought Muslim rulers to control the

Indian Ocean and won.

II.D. The Problem of Christopher Columbus1. Extremely religious man.2. Very knowledgeable about the sea. 3. Aimed to find a direct route to Asia.4. Described the Caribbean as a Garden of

Eden. 5. When he settled the Caribbean islands and

enslaved their inhabitants, he was acting as “a man of his times.”

II.E. Later Explorers1. News of Columbus’s voyage quickly spread throughout Europe. 2. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divided the non-European

world between Spain and Portugal. 3. The search for profits determined the direction of Spanish

exploration and expansion.4. In 1519 Ferdinand Magellan, working for Spain, rounded Cape

Horn and entered the Pacific Ocean, eventually circumnavigating the globe.

5. The Dutch East India Company expelled the Portuguese from many of their East Indian holdings in the first half of the seventeenth century. The Dutch West India Company established outposts in Africa, Spanish colonial areas, and North America.

6. In 1497 John Cabot, working for England, explored the northeast coast of North America.

7. From 1534-1541, Frenchman Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River region of Canada.

II.F. New World Conquest1. From 1519-1522, Hernando Cortes sailed

from Hispaniola to Mexico and crushed the Aztec Empire of central Mexico

2. Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire of the Andes between 1531 and 1536.

III. Europe and the World after Columbus

III.A. Spanish Settlement and Indigenous Population Decline 1. In the 16th century, 200,000 Spaniards

immigrated to the New World, altering the landscape and bringing with them disease.

2. The Spanish established the encomienda system, giving conquerors the right to employ groups of Amerindians.

3. Disease, malnutrition, overwork, and violence led to catastrophic drops in the indigenous population.

4. Missionaries sought to convert Amerindians to Christianity.

5. The decline in the Amerindian population created a labor shortage in the Americas.

III.B. Sugar and Slavery1. Before the 1400s, virtually all slaves in Europe were

white.2. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople cut off slaves

from the Black Sea region. 3. With Portuguese voyages to West Africa and the

occupation of the Canary and Madeira islands, slavery hooked up the sugar culture.

4. Native Americans did not survive long under conditions of slavery and forced labor.

5. The Spaniards brought in enslaved Africans as substitutes

6. The Atlantic slave trade reached its peak in the eighteenth century.

III.C. The Columbian Exchange1. The most important changes brought by the

Columbian voyages may have been biosocial in nature.

2. Flora, fauna, and diseases traveled in both directions across the Atlantic.

3. New world foods became Old World staples.4. Domestic animals were brought to the New World.5. European diseases ravaged Amerindian

populations. 6. Sailors and settlers brought syphilis back with

them to Europe.

III.D. Silver and the Economic Effects of Spain’s Discoveries1. During the 1500s and 1600s, there was a huge influx of

precious metals into Spain from its American colonies. 2. Population increase in Spain and the establishment of

new colonies created greater demand for goods in Spain. The economy could not meet the demands. Together with the influx of specie, this led to inflation.

3. Inflation caused the Spanish government to go bankrupt several times.

4. Payment of Spanish armies in bullion created inflation throughout Europe, which greatly hurt nobles on fixed incomes.

5. Chinese demands for payment in silver for its products and taxes shaped the world silver trade.

III.E. The Birth of the Global Economy 1. The new intercontinental seaborne trade brought into

being three successive commercial empires: the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Dutch.

2. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese enjoyed hegemony over the sea route to India.

3. Portuguese Brazil produced most of the sugar consumed in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

4. The Spanish established a land empire in the New World and a seaborne empire in the Pacific.

5. The world experienced a commercial boom from about 1570 to 1630.

6. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch seaborne trade predominated.

III.F. Spain’s Global Empire1. Spanish expansion in the New World and Asia was

combined with Spanish expansion within Europe itself. 2. Philip II inherited a vast, but unwieldy empire. 3. Philip’s intense religiosity bred political inflexibility. 4. Philip backed a plot to replace Elizabeth I with the Catholic

Mary Queen of Scots.5. When the plot failed and Mary was executed, Philip

assembled a vast fleet to invade England. The Spanish Armada sailed on May 9, 1588.

6. A combination of factors led to the total destruction of the Spanish Armada.

7. While Spain quickly recovered, the defeat of the Armada prevented Philip from reimposing religious unity on Western Europe by force.

IV. Changing Attitudes and Beliefs

IV.A. New Ideas about Race1. There was no particular connection

between race and slavery in the Ancient world.

2. European settlers brought their ideas about race with them to the Americas.

3. Medieval Christians and Arabs shared negative views of blacks.

4. Slavery in the new world contributed to the dissemination of more rigid notions of racial inferiority.

IV.B. Michel de Montaigne and Cultural Curiosity1. Montaigne (1533-1592), a French

nobleman, created the essay as a means of clarifying his own thoughts.

2. Montaigne was a skeptic; that is, he rejected the notion that any single human being knew the absolute truth. He also rejected the notion that any one culture was inherently superior to any other.

IV.C. Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature1. Literature and drama flowered in England

during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I (r. 1603-1625).A) William Shakespeare’s playsB) The King James Bible